The London _Times_ assailed in violent terms the reactionary policies of Russia, and a special organ, called _Darkest Russia_, was published for this purpose by Russian political refugees in England.

The Russian Government denied these rumors through its diplomatic channels, though at the very same time the well-informed _Novoye Vremya_ and _Grazhdanin_ were not barred from printing news items concerning the projected disabilities or from recommending ferocious measures against the Jews for the purpose "of removing them from all branches of labor." This comedy was well understood abroad.

At the end of July and in the beginning of August interpellations were introduced in both Houses of the English Parliament, as to whether Her Majesty's Government found it possible to make diplomatic representations in defence of the persecuted Russian Jews for whom England would have to provide, were they to arrive there in large masses.

Premier Salisbury, in the House of Lords, and Fergusson, the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, in the House of Commons, replied that "these proceedings, which, if rightly reported to us, are deeply to be regretted, concern the internal affairs of the Russian Empire, and do not admit of any interference on the part of Her Majesty's Government." [1] When shortly afterwards preparations were set on foot for calling a protest meeting in London, the Russian Government hastened to announce through the British ambassador in St.
Petersburg that no new measures against the Jews were in contemplation, and the meeting was called off.

Rumor had it that the Lord Mayor of London, Henry Isaacs, who was a Jew, did not approve of this meeting, over which, according to the English custom, he would have to preside.
The action of the Lord Mayor may have been "tactful," but is was certainly not free from an admixture of timidity.
[Footnote 1: See _The Jewish Chronicle_ of August 8, 1890, p.